Children At Risk: Stop prosecuting families at the border [Opinion]

Demonstrators hold a large banner that reads “Humanity Is Borderless,” outside of a U.S. Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, June 17, 2018.

Photo: Sergio Flores / Bloomberg

In May, the Trump administration announced its zero-tolerance policy — meaning the United States U.S. will prosecute all undocumented people apprehended while attempting to enter into the country U.S. between ports of entry without exception. Last week, the president issued an executive order to halt the appalling practice of family separations that zero tolerance has engendered. This order claims to “maintain family unity by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.” However, this executive order does not stop the current practice of ripping traumatized immigrant children away from their families. If we truly hold family values dear, if we sincerely believe that children belong with their parents, and if freedom matters, we must end the zero-tolerance policy.

Prior to zero tolerance, families were kept together in family shelters. Now, if families do not present themselves at an official port of entry, they are automatically prosecuted for improper entry. The parents are likely to be found guilty or plead guilty to this misdemeanor. The Department of Homeland Security can then remove their children, because with a criminal conviction, the parents are “unfit.” These children are then deemed “unaccompanied” and transferred into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. This administration blames a 1993 case, Flores v. Reno, for requiring the separation of children and families, because under the settlement reached in Flores, they cannot be held in immigration detention centers together.

The effectiveness of the executive order depends on either Congress creating legislation to override the Flores settlement or the federal judiciary modifying it to allow for the indefinite detainment of immigrant children. If Congress overrides Flores or a federal judge alters its terms, family detention centers will become the new option at our borders. In effect, family separation is transformed into family incarceration. If neither Congress nor the judiciary branch respond, the current mistreatment of children will continue. This executive order is a Band-Aid on a wound that needs a tourniquet.

Border crossings have not been deterred by current policies denying asylum-seekers entry at legal ports or by narrowing asylum claims. Migrants will cross into the United States unlawfully and request asylum no matter how painful family separation or detention may be, because it cannot compare to what many migrants are fleeing in their home countries. The difficult decision these families make, often in the best interest of their children, is ignored.

Both separation and long-term detention has detrimental, lasting effects on children. Jack Shonkoff, director at Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, has researched how toxic stress and trauma affects the brain. When children are separated from their parents at the border, they experience toxic stress — intense, repetitive or prolonged adversity without an adult’s intervention. Children are especially vulnerable because they are undergoing major brain development. These biological consequences on brain and emotional development have long-term, irreversible effects.

“Then they came for the migrant children and families, and I did not speak out — because I am not an immigrant.”

Some questioned whether Children At Risk needed to publicly take a stand against this policy. In the practice of advocacy, there can never be too many voices demanding for change. One voice, or even two, can be easily ignored or dismissed. A group of voices, speaking in solidarity, is a movement, a roar that is hard for political forces to ignore. It is our choice to speak out. Children at Risk makes the choice to not remain silent on this issue. We must speak out. We must demand accountability, transparency and humanitarian action from our government.

If we cannot raise our voice to this injustice, to this humanitarian crisis, we cannot in good faith advocate for every child. We must demand humane treatment and family reunification. Call your representatives. Donate. Volunteer. And Vote.

Ross is the director of the Center for New American Children at Children At Risk, a Texas-based advocacy and research group. Treacy is the assistant director of the Center for Social Measurement & Evaluation at Children At Risk, and Shallenberger is a summer law fellow at Children At Risk.